


Making a Living off of Death

by notcre8ive



Series: What Might've Been Lost [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - Fandom, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: All hurt no comfort, Assassination Attempt(s), Blood, Gen, Gun Violence, Happy Deserves Higher Pay, Hurt Peter Parker, I decided to write a complex villain, I do not Go Easy on Peter, Iron Dad & Spider-Son, Peter Parker Whump, Post-Endgame, Protective Peter Parker, Tony Stark Is Not Helping, but we're ignoring... that, do NOT get used to it, have fun in there!, this is an unbeta'd dumpster fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2020-12-14 21:17:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21022418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notcre8ive/pseuds/notcre8ive
Summary: He mostly wants to get paid so he can take a vacation. His divorce exhausted him. His loneliness is crippling. He wants to see the Amazon before he dies. He just needs the cash. So he throws himself into a high-paying job that may be a little out of his depth: assassinating Tony Stark.





	1. Aiming For Greatness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello Spider-Man fandom! I'm K, I’m a long-time whump writer, fairly new Marvel fan. I’ve written whump for various fandoms, and I’m extremely excited to make my first post not only in the Spidey fandom, but on AO3 itself! I’ve got about a million plots to put to paper, so let’s all pray that I get them all to page instead of letting them fester in my head as they have for the past several months.  
With this being my first spidey-fic, please be gentle. Also, I know this doesn’t scream spidey-fic straight away, but we’ll get there, I promise. I just really wanted to flesh out this villain. He’s important to me. A friend. We may see more of him. Idk. I like him though. Anyway, enjoy this first chapter, and see the end notes for more thoughts.

When people ask him what he does, he generally tells them he’s a freelancer. On occasion they will enquire further, “A freelance _what?_”, to which he will respond, “Whatever I can.” That’s basically true—while he deals mostly in assassinations, he also does assaults and robberies on occasion. Sometimes he needs to put the fear of God into people. Sometimes he just needs to play God.

The hit on Tony Stark comes to him in a heavily encrypted email that takes his computer two days to work through. Sometimes clients are paranoid like that, making the orders so difficult to access that most people in the business walk away before they even know what they’re for. He supposes this isn’t a bad idea. Plausible deniability and all that. But it’s annoying for him to have to wait around for his program to work out the endless lines of tangled code. This also probably means payment will come in a similar form, which is even more annoying.

Anyway, the hit on Tony Stark gets sent to him and three other colleagues and he’s the first one to decode it (and probably the only one to try) so first come, first kill. The built-in kill code activates and his instructions unwrite themselves from the screen, his laptop defaulting to his desktop photo of the silhouette of a dog on a sunset. Alright, time to strategize.

First, he has to get to New York. Then he has to figure out how to get Stark’s schedule. Then he has to get close to him. Then he has to kill him.

* * *

Hacking into Stark’s security team is above his skill set but gaining access to his employee files ends up being pretty easy. Cross-check some names, Google some addresses, hack a local AT&T store, and boom, he has access to the personal phones of who he has decided is two key players in his plan: the head of security and an intern.

He decides these two are key because he sees them too much. Photos from expos, parties, conferences, press events—the two are a constant presence at the side of Tony Stark. The security head quite frankly looks like an oaf, and the intern doesn’t appear to be older than college age, so he decides that they can’t do too much thwarting to his plan. The more he gets to know them through the screen, the more he feels that way.

The emails that the two have sent back and forth are heavily encrypted, and there are heaps of text messages that are as well. He can’t believe it, but his main source of information is coming from the animojis that the two send each other on occasion. The intern favors the alien. The security head favors the brown bear. (The intern also thinks the security head should use the poop one more, but that’s beside the point.)

Through the animojis, GPS tracking, and some old-fashioned stalking-- er, in-person reconnaissance, he discovers that the intern is a student at a magnet school in Forest Hills and that the security head is, for whatever reason, his personal after-school driver. The relationship between the two of them seems pretty relaxed. They clearly have a long history of uneventful school pick-ups, because he just sits in the visitor parking lot and stares at them without detection as the security head pulls up in the black Audi, the intern hops in, and they wait in the long queue to get off the campus. He trails the car, but the location of drop-off changes on the daily—sometimes a restaurant, sometimes a bodega, twice it was just an alleyway. Once they went to Stark Tower, or at least he assumes that’s where they were heading, but by the time they were two blocks away he decided to drop off to avoid getting clocked on any of Stark’s cameras. Even though Stark probably had access to every CCTV in town. Sometimes you just have to play it safe.

After about two weeks of monitoring, he gets his golden ticket. His phone pings a few times in a row, and he opens it to witness an exchange between Alien and Brown Bear:

**[Alien] Are we still on for after school?**  
**[Brown Bear] Yeah, he had to move some stuff around so we might be late, but we’ll still be there.**  
**[Alien] Cool! It’s probably better, I don’t want—_[the alien hesitates, rotates his head, lowers voice] _ Mr. Stark to have to deal with people freaking out about him being here.**  
**[Brown Bear] Don’t worry about it, kid.**  
**[Brown Bear] I think he’s kind of excited to see your school and your friends.**  
**[Alien] Okay, well I’ll see you guys later then.**  
**[Alien] OH! Can we please go to Julio’s again? Please? I’m craving breadsticks.**  
**[Brown Bear] Boss says okay.**  


So the decision had to be made: to carry out the assassination on a high school campus, or at an Italian restaurant in Brooklyn. He sighs as he Googles “Midtown academic calendar forest hills,” and sighs again when he discovers that tonight is the Annual Science Fair. What will Tony Stark do in the presence of one thousand geeks and their parents: double down on security or keep it modest? He rapidly Googles some more, trying to find instances of Tony Stark, billionaire and savior of the universe, attending a high school science fair. Bingo. Seven years ago he had attended the science fair of the Bronx High School of Science, and according to r/TonyStark and r/IronMan, he had only had Brown Bear and his gauntlets at his disposal. No supplementary guards? Not wise, Stark. Still, one instance was not enough to base his operation on.

Further inquiries reveal that Stark, in his years since becoming the savior of the universe, has only grown laxer. His prosthetic arm doubles as a housing unit for the Iron Man suit, sure, but it seems to be de-weaponized most of the time. He’s spotted without security regularly—outings with clients, with the Avengers team, with the kid, all solo. Rarely a body guard appears, but it’s only when he’s with his daughter or wife. Maybe it’s because Stark thinks he’s too big to fuck with. Maybe Stark is, and maybe this is a big mess in the making. Oh well. He decides the assassination is going to go down at the school, but he needs one more thing to make it go off well. So he calls a colleague, has them transfer the encrypted message, decodes it again (but faster, thank you machine learning), backward engineers it, and makes a phone call. And a request.

Two hours later, a cloaking suit arrives at a P.O. box, to which he has the key.

* * *

Sometimes his clients gift him cool things to execute a mission, but a cloaking suit is hands-down the coolest thing he’s gotten. He didn’t know what he expected when he takes it out of the courier box, but it looks almost civilian—a thick grey windbreaker with lines of reflective material running down the sleeves, and a pair of pants to match. It’s basically a tracksuit. He’s relieved. New Yorkers have likely seen weirder things than a man dressed in full tactical attire on the subway, but it’s still nice to have a low profile.

He messes around with the settings and soon enough he’s standing before the hotel bathroom mirror almost completely invisible, only a slight warp betraying where he is. Nothing anyone would see unless they were looking for it. Without the hood on, he looks like Harry Potter on his first Christmas at Hogwarts. He is—he dare say—giddy.

He deactivates the cloaking, grabs his guitar case (read: sniper rifle) and wallet and leaves the hotel.

* * *

Before getting to the school, he has a slice of pizza, a coke, and a bag of gummy bears. This is not good fuel for the potential get-away sprint, but he can’t help himself. He’s so happy, he can just feel the brewing of a good mission on its way.

He arrives at the school after classes have let out and before the end of the science fair, meaning that the parking lot is a ghost town. His cloaking suit already activated, he climbs up on his predetermined hiding spot (a portable building next to the bus parking lot which would allow him ample cover and a quick escape were things to get hairy), sets up his Barrett M82 (already sheathed in its matching grey cloaking suit), and hunkers down. He lets his mind wander as half an hour passes, thoughts looping around his ex-wife (that bitch), his breakfast tomorrow (maybe that 2.8-star diner down the street), and his dog (who was currently boarding at a doggy daycare next to his house in Kentucky and got a time-out today). Finally, families start spilling out of the front doors of the school, and from his view atop the portable, he can clearly see the faces of all exiting.

Fifteen minutes pass of parental pride and filial embarrassment before Stark, the security head, and the intern come walking out. By the time they exit, most of the fair has cleared out and only a few cars remain in the lot—probably teachers and staff. The intern is clutching a blue ribbon and a small trophy while the security head struggles to maintain hold of some kind of robotic device. Stark has his hands jammed in his pockets, strolling casually, lips quirked in a contented smile as the intern rambles about something. He can barely hear it—something about how the intern knew his project was good but didn’t think it would win an award or anything. For a moment, he pauses, feeling a little remorse. He had always wanted kids. The intern seemed pretty endearing. Oh well. Moment over.

He lines up the sight on Stark. It’s a clean shot, a beautiful shot, a stars-have-aligned-and-I’m-about-to-get-away-with-this shot, and he feels the rush of a perfectly executed assassination flow through his veins. This moment is why he mainly deals in assassinations. This high of having so much power yet not even being seen, it hits different. He drops the safety and just as his finger twitches back to the trigger the most bizarre thing happens.

The intern looks at him.

Of course, the kid can’t look at him, he has the cloaking suit on, but the kid’s suspicious eyes pass over the top of the portable and he feels violated.

Also, he squeezes the trigger thrice.

And then a more bizarre thing happens: the kid drops.

_Well, shit._

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I plan on this being four chapters. I have fragments of the next two written. Essentially, you’re getting two more POVs and a recovery. If you have any specific tropes you’d like to see, let me know! I can’t guarantee I’ll incorporate them but I do love some audience inspiration, and who knows, they may bring on other fics.  
Thanks for reading so far, and please come back next time! Also, feel free to hit me up on tumblr @queenssunshine.


	2. Guns N Robots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If only Peter's science fair project winning the innovation award could have been the most eventful part of the evening.
> 
> But things rarely go that smoothly when Tony is involved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the amazing reception to my first story in this fandom! The exhilaration of writing and posting and it actually being liked was overwhelming—I spent the next day daydreaming about future chapters at work and writing when I got home.
> 
> The trajectory of this story has already changed so much based off of your reactions. For one, I think there are going to be more chapters. I have the next three planned out, and the next chapter written, but just as things changed with the previous chapter, I imagine that can still happen. I’m so excited about this story and y’all are the ones who gave me that energy!
> 
> A small warning before we dive in: this chapter contains a lot of cussing. Not even light cussing. Like, bad cussing. I’m sorry if you find this offensive, but brains short circuit in crisis. Take this warning as one for all future chapters—I’m just really liberal with the F-word I guess. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, and enjoy this next chapter!

Tony isn’t sure what happened.

One moment he’s having a perfect evening, walking out of the science fair to the tune of his spiderling rambling about his award-winning science project, and the next he’s being body-checked by the kid, and the next after that he’s catching Peter under the armpits as he goes down.

Three bright red splotches are growing on his soft blue shirt: one on just above his collar bone, one below his sternum, and one right above his heart.

_What the fuck? Fuck fuck fuckshitfuckwhatthefuckshitshitshit. _

“Whoa whoa whoa, kid, you’re okay, you’re okay.” He lowers Peter to his back, all 158 pounds of him, and Peter is just absolutely boneless. The litany of foul words continues in Tony’s head as he presses his hands down over the wounds, eyes scanning the parking lot. Where did the shots come from? Are they still in danger? 

Tony feels a hand fish into his pocket, and Happy slides the Stark glasses onto his face. “FRIDAY, give me heat signatures.” His voice is breathless as he glances around frantically, drawing his pistol. And then his eyes lock onto something. “I’m going to kill him,” he assures Tony as he takes off. 

Who, what, where, why—Tony doesn’t know. Confusion and panic are reigning in his mind; however he tries to slow things down so he can do the most important thing he knows: help this kid. He looks back at Peter and his world narrows to red on blue and brown eyes. Peter is wheezing, one arm awkwardly bent across his torso, the other out at his side. The trophy and ribbon lie aside, abandoned. Peter’s eyes are wide and fucking terrified. None of this can be real. It’s a thing of nightmares—nightmares he’s been having for seven years now. 

“Hang on bud, you’re okay,” Tony mutters as he all but tears off his sport coat and presses it to the wounds on his chest, moving Peter’s hand out of the way. Peter’s eyes squeeze closed in a grimace and he grunts as Tony reapplies pressure. 

“Didn’t hurt until you did that,” he rasps. He has blood on his teeth. _ Fuck fuck fuck._

“You only have about ten more minutes of it hurting kid, after that Cho will get you pumped full of the good stuff.” he says to Peter, and then to FRIDAY, “Get a med team here _now,_ and lock down the school. Nobody goes in or out, and I want police here securing the perimeter. Nobody can know Peter’s been shot.” He doesn’t have his glasses so he can’t hear the response, but he knows his orders are being executed. 

“Why not?” Peter breathes. 

“Because how will we explain you being at school completely healed on Monday if that’s the case?” 

Peter nods, his furrowed brow betraying his lack of confidence. 

The blood is soaking through the coat and Tony curses. “Kiddo, I need you to put pressure on this so I can get my shirt off.” 

Peter is quiet for a moment, only the sound of his crackling breath between the two of them. 

“I can’t—I can’t move my arm.” His voice is high and thin and _young. _

Peter’s eyes meet his own, and Tony can see the tears forming. Tony would have freaked out more about it if Peter didn’t begin to fucking cough up blood at that exact moment. Weak, shallow coughs bring a spray of red out onto his lips, but it must not be enough to rid his airways of the liquid because Peter begins to gag. 

“Hey, hey, hey, hey,” Tony mumbles mindlessly in an attempt to soothe him. Distantly he wonders why he keeps repeating himself. 

Tony is momentarily conflicted. If the bullet hit Peter’s spinal cord—if Peter is—Tony can’t bear the word—then he knows he shouldn’t move him. He knows he shouldn’t risk upsetting the bullet and doing further damage. But he also knows if he doesn’t clear Peter’s airway he’ll choke, and being paralyzed doesn’t really mean much if you’re dead. So he rolls Peter on his side, facing away from him. 

Again, he’s bewildered by how limp Peter is. No taut resistance, no painful cringes, not even the rearrangement of limbs in response to the change of position—only the weak spasm of his diaphragm as it attempts to reject fluid that very much does not belong where it is. Peter’s head is so heavy where he cradles it, trying to keep his neck still. Tony’s stomach protests and he protests back, taking a deep breath and holding it. 

He’s simultaneously relieved and terrified by the lack of exit wounds on the kid’s back. Less blood now, but more potential complications. He’s struck with the realization that this isn’t a blessing in a bad situation—this situation shouldn’t have happened in the first place. Tony should have been the one shot. The feeling of guilt and something else, something unidentifiable and dark, roils in his stomach again, but he asks it to patiently wait it’s turn. He’ll throw up when they’re back at the Tower. 

When the coughing stops, he gently rolls Peter flat onto his back again. Peter’s eyes are squeezed shut in pain, short pants bursting forth with an underlying whine. Tony’s heart wrenches. This kid—_his fucking kid_—god, he looks like shit. “It’s gonna be okay, Pete, we’re gonna patch you up, good as new, alright? You’ll be fine. You’ll be just fine.” Tony tears his button-up off—this time really tears it—and wads it up, pressing it to the chest wounds. Peter’s eyes open in response to the pain, but this time they’re hazier, heavily lidded. He’s losing it. Fuck. 

This is bad. 

“FRI, get Happy back, I need him back here now. Tell him—uh, tell him to hurry. I don’t think—” He stops because he can’t finish the sentence. 

Peter’s eyes drift over to him and Tony looks away from his bloodied shirt. Peter says nothing but his gaze communicates so much: _I’m sorry. It’s okay. I’m scared. I love you._

And then Peter’s eyes close. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After writing that chapter I’m going to have to clear my browser history lol. It’s full of research on assault weapons, gunshot wounds, coughing up blood… it looks really weird. Anyway, hopefully there aren’t too many glaring medical inaccuracies in this. And if there are, well, please look past it, and get ready for more in future chapters! Woohoo!
> 
> Really, if you have any ideas or wishes for what’s to come, let me know! If I like it, I might work it in. If you have questions, I’ll work answers into the text. Since The Assassin is of my own creation, I have all kinds of ideas about him that I haven’t even explored in the text. He is a fully-fleshed human in my mind. So if I’ve written something about him that doesn’t make sense to you, say something! I likely just failed to write in a good explanation and I’m happy to make that happen.  
Also, if you’ve got a whump prompt you want to read, let me know on Tumblr! I’m always accepting prompts and would love to bring something to life for you. Hit me up, @queenssunshine!


	3. Catching Ghosts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took So Very Long. I kind of psyched myself out with how much I want to do with this story-- I think it has to be two parts. No I will not elaborate.
> 
> There is light drug use in this chapter, so take note if need be, and take care of yourselves folks!

He isn’t sure what happened.

One moment, he’s got his sight trained on Stark, and the next, he’s sinking three bullets into a high schooler. 

An eighteen-year-old.

A boy.

_ Fuck. _

Now is not the time to dwell on it, though, as the security head is charging at him with the ferocity and speed of a pissed-off hippopotamus. 

_ Fuck fuck fuckfuckshitfuck— _

He barely has the time to zip his guitar case around his rifle before he’s leaping off of the portable, slinging the case up onto his back. Not the best thing to run with, but he’s done it many a time before. 

He takes off out of the parking lot and down the residential street he knows leads back to Queens Boulevard, grateful for his invisibility, and only spares a glance backwards when he hits the first block. The security head is still in pursuit, pistol drawn, eyes trained on him. What the fuck? How is he seeing him? The only way he would be detected is—

_ Fuck! _ Heat signatures. Of course. Of-fucking-course. The glasses must be tech, they’re Tony Stark’s. Of course he would be seen. Just his luck, to be given a cloaking suit—something that would work if it were any other target—only for it to backfire so tremendously.

Worse, the cloaking suit is not designed for running, and the hood, equipped with only a translucent panel for vision, is growing muggy with his pepperoni breath. There’s no ventilation for his breath to escape. He regrets his lunch. He regrets his job. He regrets his life.

He makes it another two blocks and looks back again, afraid to see the security head bearing down on him. Instead, to his shock, he sees an empty street. 

What?

But he’s definitely one to look a gift horse in the mouth. He pounds out the next two blocks and only slows when he hasn’t seen the security in two minutes. At that point, he’s nearing the entrance to the E, so he dodges into an empty alley, deactivates his suit’s cloaking, and strolls out checking his phone. He holds it up to his ear and pretends to have a conversation. 

“No Mikey, I told you I’d be over at eight… yeah I know. Should I bring a bottle of wine? Well you did say he’s a bigshot. Yeah, I’ve got my guitar with me, but I gotta get on the E, it may be awhile… okay. Okay. I’m not going to fuck it up, I promise. Yeah. I’m going into the subway now, I gotta go. I told you I gotta go. Bye.”

He does this for a few reasons. For one, it fabricates a story for everyone within the nearby vicinity. Two, it calms him down. It helps him pretend like he’s living a fucking normal life. The first time he did it was after shooting a foreign dignitary dead—his first high profile job. He pretended to call his absentee father and tell him about his successful gig. Because of the guitar case, his fantasies usually revolve around being a musician. In fact, when he gives it considerable thought, he might be creating a continuous story here. 

He fumbles with the fucking metro card but successfully gains entrance to the subway on the fourth swipe, glancing back at the attendant who was more occupied with his sandwich than with the shrill woman standing at the counter. No one has noticed him. He’s blending in. He’s fine.

He shot a kid.

He still feels winded, and he can’t tell if it’s from the sprint or from the terror of what he’s done. He wishes more than anything that he could pick up his phone again and make a bogus call, maybe this time to his ex-wife, but cell service was non-existent down here. He instead takes a seat and wedges his guitar case between his legs, and leans his head against the case. He’s fucked. He’s so fucked.

In his fifteen-year career (military experience included), he has killed some bad people. Some real assholes. But in the same span, he’s killed a few good people, and it’s those that stick with him. They haunt him constantly. He can’t sleep. He has panic attacks. He’s paranoid to all hell. This is why his ex divorced him; he knows that. Not because of what he did, but because of how he dealt with it. He’s worried he’s just caught himself a new ghost.

Getting back to his Jersey City apartment takes over an hour and by the time he’s slinking up the steps to the entrance all the adrenaline from the hit has worn clean off. The street reeks of weed, and he pauses in front of the door, trying to gauge just how badly he needs to calm down. He decides on _ pretty badly._

He hunts down the smoker, a guy curled up on the stairs on the backside of the building, and charms him into selling a gram (“I’m not a dealer though, dude. But if you need a guy let me know,” the man insists.) He then retreats into the apartment, rolls himself a thin joint, cracks a window, and smokes it, letting the smoke stream out into the street.

While he waits for the high, he swings his guitar case onto the bed and unzips it, carefully removing the scope from its place nestled in the sturdy foam of the case. He grabs his laptop and a mini-USB to USB cable and plants himself on the couch, connecting the scope to his PC. This scope was also a gift of a former client, outfitted with a state-of-the-art camera that recorded the footage he now provided to customers as evidence. He practices some deep breathing as the video loads onto his computer. And then it’s ready. He clicks play.

The sights square up on Stark’s chest. Then the boy looks. Then the boy, with almost superhuman speed, shoves Stark aside. Then three bullets go into him. 

He curses as he runs it back in slow motion. One bullet just above his left collarbone, almost into his neck. One a few inches lower, above the heart. The last shot is wild, striking below his sternum. At that point, his aim had gone to shit in realization of what had happened.

He’s a cautious assassin. Some people, out of pride or sport, only shot one bullet. But he’s not so careless. He knows he is talented, he’s one of top picks in the field, but his record is why. And showmanship does not matter for efficacy. He’s clean, precise, and certain with every kill. It’s why he gets hired. And it’s how he killed a kid.

He sets aside the laptop, sighing. The marijuana brain fog is setting in, and as a thin layer of haze settles over his mind he sags back into the couch, leaning his head back to rest on its low back. He takes another deep breath, willing the anxiety and regret down. He touches his cheeks, hot and wet suddenly, and his hands ball up into fists, reflexively pressing against his eye sockets. Some emotion gnaws at his belly, but the weed has made his mind to muddled to identify it. He wishes he had whiskey to mingle with the drugs and help him further himself from these feelings, but he knows to do that here would be sloppy. He may not have killed his mark, but he sure as hell killed someone. And he needed to get out of town, ASAP.

Then the weed hit full force, and his brain went snow screen.

Okay, maybe tomorrow morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave a comment and let me know how you felt about this chapter! I know not everyone reacts to weed in the same way but this is definitely how I feel-- incapable of functioning. It felt right for our lovely little assassin. Stay tuned for the next chapter, and happy holidays to you all!
> 
> xoxo


	4. This Is Where It Ends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all! So sorry for the long wait. This whole pandemic thing has been really rough on me and I actually lost my job because of it, so I've not been super productive because of a wee bit of depression. It's okay though, I'm coping better-ish now.
> 
> Anyway, I have a lot of ideas for this and other fun fics (all whump no fluff woooooo) and I have all the time in the world to execute them so hopefully, you'll be seeing a lot more of me soon. Enjoy this next chapter and yell at me in the comments!

  
Given Happy’s stature, people would be surprised by how long he can sprint. The moment FRIDAY locks onto the heat signatures of the shooter, he takes off with reckless abandon. The truth is, he has to do this so often he’s quite fast. 

He’s tearing after the perpetrator, gun drawn, when FRIDAY’s voice chirps into his ear: “Boss needs you back. It’s urgent.”

Happy slams on the breaks, his heart dropping. If it’s urgent—if Tony wants him to give up the pursuit—he doesn’t want to think of what’s happening back on the steps of the school.

He considers for a moment. Does he drop the perp now? Then he would have to deal with a body, which would slow him down getting back to Tony and Peter. And if Peter is—

He just doesn’t have the time.

“FRIDAY, can you dispatch a tracker from the satellite system in time to grab him?”

There’s a beat of silence. “I’ll do my best,” she replies.

And so Happy takes off again in the other direction.

\--

Though he had done his best to not imagine, he had. And it was worse than he had imagined.

Tony is stripped down to his undershirt, bowed over an unresponsive Peter, executing panicked CPR. Blood-soaked fabric forms a sopping pile next to them, next to the forgotten trophy and ribbon that Peter had just won. The kid looks dead. 

And according to FRIDAY, the kid _is_ dead. “Only one vital sign, sir,” she reports somberly.

Peter is dead.

_One._ Happy falls to his knees next to Tony, overcome. He takes a moment to left grief wash over him. This was a rule of his, one he had devised after he first discovered meditation: in stressful situations, he would allow his emotions to have their way with him for five seconds, and then he would refocus. _Two. _ And so he did. He let his eyes fill, his breath leave him, failure striking at his heart quicker than the bullets that felled Peter. _Three._ His charge, his ward—how much had he carried Peter through, for this to be it? This, a science fair? _Four._ God, he can't _ breathe_.

_Five._ And just like that, his time to feel is over. He takes his focus off Peter and instead directs his attention to his boss. Tony is quivering, eyes trained on Peter’s slack face, pumping out violent chest compressions. Happy has no idea how long he’s been doing this, but if it’s as long as he thinks, he knows Tony needs a break. Between his heart condition, his anxiety, and the physicality of CPR, Happy figured he could stroke out at any moment. Happy gives him a gentle nudge. “Take a break, let me do it.”

Tony doesn’t budge, but pants out, “No, I need to do this.”

“Tony, you’re gonna overexert yourself—”

“I said no, Happy, I swear to God if you touch me again—”

Happy backs off, but only because the thrumming of a chopper begins to whisk the air around them. Funny, he hadn’t even heard the approach.

The medical staff pours out the moment the landing skids strike pavement, Cho leading with an AED and crash kit. “FRIDAY, update please,” she says calmly, simultaneously making eye contact with Happy. He knows what she wants. He looks sideways at Tony, unsure of how he could pry the man away from his dead surrogate son. He’s had to do a lot of difficult things for Tony’s own good, but this one might be the hardest.

“Okay Tones,” he says, voice low. Tony, as expected, does not respond.

“Tony, we have to move so Dr. Cho can work.” It’s as if he hasn’t spoken, so he reaches out and laces an arm in front of Tony’s chest, forcing him away from Peter’s body. Happy expects resistance but Tony simply folds into him, shoulders slumping against Happy’s chest. They awkwardly shift away from the scene, only far enough to allow a team member to assume Tony’s position administering compressions, while another fastens the AED pads. 

“Tony,” Dr. Cho says, voice grave, “Friday is reporting that there was evidence of spinal cord injury, is that true?”

Happy’s chest freezes over.

“He—uh, he couldn’t move his arms,” Tony replies, voice thin and breathless. Happy pans to look at him and realizes how pale Tony has become, how rapidly his chest is rising and falling. 

Cho doesn’t hesitate. “Assume c-spine injury, we need maximum immobilization. Mohan, once the AED runs its course, I need you to intubate. Keene, I want you over here…” Cho continues to delegate, words reduced to white noise as Happy watches the team swarm around Peter. His mind oscillates between frustration at how something like this could happen and shock at how it did, and he almost starts losing it again before he remembers that he is not the most unstable person here.

He looks at Tony, who is only moments away from hyperventilation. “Cho,” Happy calls, “I’m loading him up on the helicopter.” Cho doesn’t look up but nods approval.

Happy (heavily) assists Tony to the chopper, a mid-sized Stark Med beast that could both accommodate the 6-person medical team as well as haul ass from the city to the Avengers Compound in under twenty minutes. They had been in and out of it so many times and still, this time felt different. 

Tony’s fingers fumble the buckle on his seat, so Happy kneels before him and begins to fasten it himself while Tony tilts his head back against the headrest, hands rising to cover his face. His arms are flecked with goosebumps, chest heaving, and Happy fears he is entering a state of shock. 

“Hey, Tony.” He has to raise his voice over the drone of helicopter blades. Tony drops his arms and head simultaneously, glassy eyes staring into Happy’s. Happy almost has to look away, discomfort seeping into his chest. He persists regardless. “We’ll get through this.” And then, because it bears repeating: “We’ll get through this. I promise.” And then he strips off his sports coat and drapes it over Tony, tucking it behind his shoulders.

As he sits next to Tony and begins to strap himself in, Cho bursts into the helicopter, her team not far behind with a gurney in tow. “We have to go, now,” She shouts at the pilot. Then she turns to Tony and Happy. “We’ve got him back, but we’ve got to get him in surgery immediately. But we’ve got him back.” She puts a hand tentatively on Tony’s shoulder. 

“Tony, don’t lose hope. He’s still here. Oh, and—” she reaches into her pocket and fishes out the ribbon and trophy, lightly blood-spattered. “He’s going to want this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there's only one more chapter after this, our friend Assassin has to make a getaway. After that, I'm working on a longer, more... emotional piece that will be continuing this storyline. A little spoiler for it: the title is "Hope, And Other Fickle Things."
> 
> Thank you for sticking around for this chapter! I deeply appreciate all the comments and kudos. Be safe anyone, and take care.
> 
> As always, stop by my tumblr @queenssunshine. Let's get through this together.


	5. Definitely Purposeful Martyrdom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is absolutely NO science in this chapter, completely ignore any talk of code because it is founded in my imagination. Also the Uber driver in this, George, is named after my favorite NYC charter bus driver. He will never read this, nor know of its existence, but it’s still for him. Love you dude.
> 
> Anyway, this is the last chapter of this part of the story. Enjoy. Can’t wait to show you what I have in store for part 2!

He wakes up on the couch and it’s eleven o’clock at night. There is a blissful twenty seconds where he doesn’t remember much beyond getting baked, and then slowly, like a snowball rolling down a hill, the memories accumulate in his head.

And shit, he needs to get on a plane _yesterday._

He lunges for his laptop, booting up his go-to flight finder. 

_Departing airport: All NYC._

_Destination airport:_

Hm. Good question.

He weighs his options. He should go home—that would save him a lot of money that he does not have (he blew a lot of his savings on the messy divorce and vet bills from that one time his dog at a whole stick). But his goal now is to not be trackable, and there are two reasons for this: one, Stark’s people are going to be after him, if they aren’t already. Two, his benefactor is going to be… well, a malefactor once they find out that he botched the assassination. And that’s simply no good.

He could skip to the good part and just head straight to Costa Rica or something. Fuck this building a nest egg shit, fuck his tiny ass apartment in Kentucky, fuck his fucking life at this point. He had enough money and Spanish skills to last him a few weeks, after that he would figure it out. He also had a contact in Colombia (not that that was the retirement spot he was looking for) that could maybe help him get settled in if he went there. Maybe he could just commit some credit fraud and buy a ticket to the Amazon like he had wanted all along, and once he’s gone fishing for piranha and pet a pink dolphin he can just throw himself into a bullet ant mound and die in the epic and painful way he deserves. 

Too bad his dog is waiting for him in a tiny doggy day care, costing him seventy dollars a day and wreaking havoc on the other residents. Death by bullet ant is not (currently) a possibility. But he can delay getting home by a few days to throw off any pursuers.

As he scrolls through the possible flights, he tries not to let his mind wander to the atrocities of the evening. He doesn’t think about the boy dropping into the arms of his mentor. He doesn’t think about that one time he saw a kid get blown up in some town in Afghanistan by a bomb his commander instructed him to not disarm. He _definitely _ doesn’t think about the dog he put down himself when he was fourteen after it got hit by a car. Death does not follow him, and he is not haunted by the souls that have parted this Earth at his blow. His breathing is not speeding up. He vision is not growing blurry. He’s not crying.

Okay, fine, he’s crying.

Here’s how he justified killing Tony Stark: that guy was bad for a long time. He remembers all the Stark Industries weapons he used while on his two Middle Eastern tours, and given how his personal tally of confirmed kills is in the triple digits and his buddies had gotten up there too, he can’t imagine the tens of thousands—if not _hundreds_ of thousands of people who had perished because of military use of SI tech. And then the bad guys had it too—basically, Stark had a lot of blood on his hands.

Plus, Stark had run his course. He had his drunken romps, his redemption arc, his superhero days, and now he was a multi-billionaire family man in the tallest building in all of New York City. That kind of luxury does not need to exist. It’s not fair that Stark gets to expunge his record of all crimes committed while the people who did the crime committing got called a lunatic by their ex-wife. Not fair at all.

Also not fair? That an eighteen-year-old boy saved Tony Stark’s worn out life by ending his own. And of course, that _he_ was the one to end it. He couldn’t justify that. He couldn’t.

Oh hey, this flight to Toronto leaves in five hours. Perfect. Toronto it is.

He purchases the tickets under a false name and passport number but pays with very real frequent flyer miles. Then he throws his meager belongings into his rucksack and schedules an Uber to Newark Airport for three hours later. 

Final line of business before he hightails it to the Great White North: the cloaking suit. 

He inspects it closer than he had before, taking in the material, trying to figure out how it works. Also trying to figure out if it will set off any alarms at security. 

He contemplates tossing it in the trash downstairs. Sure, it’s quality goods, but he doesn’t want to risk a possible tracker imbedded somewhere in the software to give away his position later on down the line. But then he remembers the feeling of being invisible to the world, and hey, some risks are worth taking. Maybe with a little tinkering he might be able to disable whatever codes could cause him problems. He’s got three hours to kill after all.

\--

By the time he gets the alert that his Uber is on the way, he has succeeded in accessing the coding of the suit. The first hour of work he spent just trying to find a way to connect the damn thing to his laptop—he knew that there must be a port _somewhere_ on it, but it didn’t occur to him that it would be so obvious as hidden in the stiff Champion tag.

The tag may have said Champion, but after digging around in the code for another hour he found the true maker of the suit: Oscorp. Once he managed to access the main interface, he could see evidence of the company’s research everywhere, which made him twitch. He had thought they primarily did biology research, but here was proof saying otherwise. How did his benefactor get a hold of this?

He found a hijack protocol and disabled it, then a location tracker and disabled that too. One more hour of ensuring there were no other threats and _ping_ George is on his way in an Audi A2. He sighs, folds up the suit and shoves it into the rucksack too.

It feels good to be getting out of New York. Sure, he was just heading to another major city, but at least he wouldn’t be in the U.S. for a bit. He’d been to Toronto once before and found it charming enough—it would make do for a few weeks of lying low.

He slides into George’s car and is impressed by the heft of the driver—if he were to encounter George in a bar he’d be tempted to pick a fight for fun. But now here they were, squeezed into the ugliest luxury vehicle on the market, and his heart starts to thrum a death march in his chest. He stretches, attempting to dispense the anxiety coursing through him, but the car is much too cramped to allow for that. He tries to chat up George, but George has no desire to be chatted up. 

At one point they strike out across a bridge that allows him a stunning view of the city skyline, Stark Tower a beacon in the night. He stares hard at it, an idea formulating in his mind.

_No,_ he thinks. (It was, after all, a very bad idea.)

While he’s not a superstitious man, he can’t ignore the nagging feeling of impending failure. His escape is a long shot, and despite his efforts to make himself untraceable, he imagines his benefactor and Stark will be infinitely cleverer than him. And with the guilt transitioning into nausea in his stomach, he begins to wonder… what if he went to Stark? 

What if he gave himself up?

_No no no._

No, he was already in a car on the way to the airport to catch a plane to Toronto. It was a solid, not terrible plan. He would make it work. He would not die or be tortured. And, more importantly, it would not cause him to breech his assassin moral code and rat on his benefactor. 

Yes, he would board the plane, eat Tim Hortons for a few weeks, and then return to Hardin, Kentucky and see his dog Radar again. Nothing would go wrong and everything would be fine. Hopefully.

That’s the mantra he’s repeating to himself when he realizes they’re exiting towards the city and not towards the airport. He clears his throat and says, “Uh, weren’t we supposed to stay on the interstate?”

George doesn’t look up from the road. “You’re not going to the airport. And I can’t guarantee you’ll make it to meet my boss either.”

His mind goes blank. “What the fuck does that mean?”

Now George swivels around, turning his whole body to look at him. He tries to put on a tough face but the look in George’s eyes is so intense he honestly cannot breathe. “I know what you fucking did. Give me one reason I shouldn’t fucking off you here on the spot and tell my boss it was self-defense.”

“Look I’ll work with your boss. I’ll tell them everything. I’ll get them information. I’ll do whatever. Please just… give me a chance to make things right.” Did he just beg? Leave it to Andre 3000 to get his survival instincts to kick in. _Bullet ants,_ he reminds himself. _The only acceptable way to die._

George grunts and turns to face the road again. 

A shaky breath enters his lungs and he holds it in, only releasing it when his lungs start to burn. Then something occurs to him.

“Wait, who is your boss?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooooooo, that was the final installment of Part One! I am still working on an overarching name for this series but the working title, for the time being, is “What Might’ve Been Lost.” There’s gonna be three parts, and you just finished the first one. Thank you so much for joining me on this journey! This is the first multi-chap fic I’ve finished… ever. That is embarrassing to say but I think it spells good things for our future. Every person who left a comment or a kudo is extremely dear to me, and I am so grateful for all the support I have received in my first endeavor into this amazing community.
> 
> Also, ** I am looking for a beta for part two!** Just send me a message on Tumblr @queenssunshine and we’ll have a little chat and go from there :-) Even if you’ve never beta’d, I would love to work with you! 
> 
> Thanks again, and I can’t wait to see you in Part 2: “Hope and Other Fickle Things.”


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